Chicago, Illinois

Spent the day touring Chicago. It was a beautiful sunny day, fairly warm, good day for touring. We started this morning with an architectural boat tour of the Chicago River and Sanitary Canal. The tour guide was very knowledgeable, pointed out buildings which were examples of various types of architucture along the river. We saw the Trump International Hotel and Tower, the tallest structurally all-concrete building in the world, the Willis tower, which was the world's tallest building for 24 years.  The great fire (apparently started by Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicking over a lantern) destroyed about 1/3 of the city and so left 1000 people homeless was a tragedy, but it did give  them a chance to start over with the building of the city. A man named Burnham planned the city in the early 1900s, and his plan has been followed to give many skyscrapers of different designs, as well as wonderful walkways all along the river and the lakefront. The walkways are well used by walkers, joggers, bikers, people on Segways.
Originally the Chicago River flowed into Lake Michigan. As the city grew, the people used the river to dispose of garbage, industrial waste, etc, so of course everything went into the lake. Since the drinking water came from Lake Michigan, this was a problem. In 1900 they solved the problem by digging the Sanitary canal and putting in a series of locks so that the Chicago River now runs away from Lake Michigan and all of Chicago's dirty water flows down to the Des Plaines,  Illinois and Mississippi Rivers and eventually to the Gulf of Mexico.
After the tour we went for deep dish pizza again, this time to Gino's. There is apparently some argument as to who was the originator of the deep dish pizza, Uno's or Gino's, so we decided we had better try both. All of us thought that Gino's was better. Walked out to the Navy Pier, a tourist mall with restaurants, stores and rides. Saw a 150' ferris wheel, a beautiful merry-go-round, a tethered hot air balloon. Nancy and I even found a few minutes to dash into Norstrums, one of the stores along the Magniicent Mile on Michigan Avenue.
Wayne and Eddie spent time today measuring the boats. We plan to go through Chicago on the river and Sanitary Canal, but there is one fixed bridge that is 17ft high, so we need to be able to fit under it, and we should be able to. Nancy and Eddie's Dream Fever is higher, so they plan to go around Chicago through the Cal-Sag.